Making Restitution
by SurferSquid
Summary: In the smoldering ruins of the Jedi Temple after Order 66, two mourning souls find hope in each other.


Devastation, all was devastation.

The Jedi Temple had been destroyed and ransacked not three days ago. Enormous extinguisher droids, called out from the dark recesses of wherever they hibernated in the Senate District until their services were needed, were still dousing the fires, following up an incandescent death with a watery burial. It was going to be a long job to put down all of the flames, but they literally had not the mind to complain.

So much, accumulated over so long, lost in one night.

Kili Ka'ahrey stole from one pile of damp stinking rubble to another, her large nostrils filled with burnt air and her eyes brimming with tears. Her long Bothan snout peeked out from behind a cracked and crumbling column to smell a pair of clone troopers patrolling the hall, oblivious to the tiny infiltrator in their midst. She was too good at sneaking for that.

Kili was not a Jedi - she had not been touched by the Force as they had - but she knew them well. She worked in the shadow of her mother, who had been a gardener for the Temple's lauded Room of a Thousand Fountains. Unsurprisingly, during the Clone Wars there had not been any Jedi available to tend to the gargantuan garden complex with its mass of life and growth, a myriad of species with origins as varied as the Jedi that they shared the Temple with.

Even in times of peace, however, the Temple was short on gardeners. The simple fact was that not many Jedi, save some of the older Knights, a few of the Masters, and the odd person from a plant-based species, were interested in the meditative pastime. Everyone else was too focused on combat or diplomacy to see the Room as anything more than a lovely area for relaxation and exercise, or a teaching opportunity for their Padawan when trying to convey some lesson about the interconnectedness of life through the Force. It wasn't that the Jedi were uncaring. They just hadn't the time to concern themselves with matters of upkeep.

But someone had to care for those plants, and that was where Braaya and Kili came in, Kili remembered. She stepped gingerly over molten debris pockmarked with blaster fire, around smoldering remnants of irreplaceable works of art. For the Republic - no, the _Empire_ now - to have done this was simply incomprehensible to her. So much time and effort, and so many lives, simply thrown away as though they were meaningless.

She still didn't understand exactly what had happened at the top. Although her mother had been quick to obtain information about the complicated politics behind everything, Kili was not versed in the strange ways of those who brokered in power and it did not interest her as much as plants did.

All she knew was that three days ago, she and her mother had just been sitting down to dinner when they'd heard an awful commotion. They'd rushed to the window of their tiny flat to see something they never would have dreamed: their cherished Temple, under attack by the Republic's own forces.

And then, Senator Palpatine had announced himself the new ruler of a Galactic Empire that would replace the Republic. Suddenly the entire galaxy seemed to have turned on its head.

Kili had wanted to dash to the Temple immediately to try to save as many Jedi as she could, but Braaya did not acquiesce. The two of them, she explained, were absolutely powerless against a legion of clone troopers. All they could really do was watch, and mourn, and share unvoiced questions about their future.

Today, Braaya was out searching for a new job, and Kili was left to her own devices with the strict instruction not to approach the Temple district.

But words alone were not enough to stop her.

The entryway to the Room of a Thousand Fountains was easy to find for the girl. Not just because she had gone through those doors nearly every day of her life, but because they were no longer standing. Instead, they lay wrecked and charred near the tall, empty doorway.

The immense Room itself, once lit with artificial climate controls that simulated an open sky, was now dusky, filled with the miasma of blaster-evaporated water and vegetation-fueled smoke. Fractured catwalks dangled carelessly from a cavernous ceiling, and the slow, steady drip of some dying waterway echoed in Kili's long ears. The Thousand Fountains had been drained. The Temple was its own tomb.

The area was devoid of bodies, thank goodness. Kili didn't want to have to see the lifeless forms of those she had once revered and befriended. For friends the Jedi were to her, no matter what Palpatine broadcasted. He, after all, had not known them like she did.

She had grown up around them, brought to work with her mother until Kili was old enough to help with work herself. She knew many of them by name, knew their species, their interests, the secret things they dared to hope and fear. No matter how hard they tried to deny it, the Jedi Code could not force them to stop _feeling_.

Master Yoda would visit this room regularly and compliment her and her mother in his eclectic syntax on their work, before waddling off to find serenity near a waterfall. Master Ki-Adi-Mundi strode with his followers across the bridges spanning placid pools, explaining to them deep doctrines of the Force with nods of his tall head. Coleman Kcaj's formidable Ongree visage hid an innate gentleness and love of the arts manifest as he would admire the Room's pottery. Their faces, and those of many more Jedi, faded in and out of Kili's mind as she remembered what this place had been before falling victim to the ravages of mad politics.

She stepped across an intact bridge arching across an empty basin that had once been a deep pond, and moved to a circle of benches where she remembered overhearing lessons given to younglings. Although she was supposed to be paying attention to her mother's work, Kili would pretend like she, too, was being given those lessons, that she had a hidden power inside and someday she would be a peacemaker and defender like her heroes. She'd often fantasized about being secretly Force-sensitive, and someone would find out and she'd get to live the life she dreamed of.

Now that dream had become a nightmare. Her own ordinary-ness had saved her.

The smooth stone benches were in disarray, most of them cracked down the middle as heavy detritus had sifted onto them from the collapse of infrastructure in the nearby wall. Kili couldn't say she was surprised to see even this tiny hallowed area left to ruin. To the Empire, nothing was sacred, except perhaps Palpatine himself.

She spotted a tiny glimmer of silver in the debris, barely visible unless one looked at it from her height. Her ears pricked and she made her way over to the mound it was buried in, carefully lifting away slabs of ferrocrete and rebar and trying not to make too much noise in the process.

Finally, she pulled the metal cylinder free of its rocky grave. Although dented and smudged from the abuse it had endured, it was easily recognizeable as a lightsaber hilt. Not just any hilt, she realized as she inspected it further, turning it over in her long, brown fingers. Sanja Tumb's. The bright-eyed Sullustan Padawan would perform lightsaber training exercises here with her Duros master. Kili and Sanja were the same age and Kili regarded her as a close friend.

Gurgling sounds burbled out from Kili's stinging throat as she fell to her knees, clutching the hilt desperately to her chest and letting out a sob. This discovery drove home everything she had witnessed over the past three days and she mourned the senseless slaughter of her peace-promoting friends.

Jedi were not allowed to form attachments, but the Code said nothing about others forming attachments to Jedi.

"Hey."

Kili stiffened at the gruff male voice. A thick-gloved hand suddenly seized her shoulder from behind and gripped it tightly. She turned her head to see a clone trooper standing over her, his once-gleaming armor scuffed and greyed. His slit-visored helmet looked down at her curiously, if not a bit imperiously.

The whites of her dark eyes showed in fear as she waited for him to do something else. She didn't dare move.

"Are you a Jedi?" He sounded more confused, and weary, than angry.

Kili shook her head slightly. "No, sir."

He seemed to relax, although his hand still clutched her shoulder. "Then why do you have a lightsaber?"

The Bothan looked down at her hands pressed to her chest. The hilt was hidden from his view now. That must have meant he had seen her dig it out of the rubble. She cursed herself for being so focused on one task that she forgot to keep track of her surroundings. A Jedi never would have made that mistake.

And yet here she was alive when they all had died. Fate was cruel. "It belonged to a friend of mine."

"Does it work?" The clone tilted his head inquisitively.

Against all better judgment, and because she wanted to know too, Kili held the hilt away from her like she had seen her friends do. She clicked the activation button, metal grinding against metal bent out of its original shape. The end of the hilt sparked, sputtered, and stayed dark.

"Well, I guess that answers that," the trooper replied, his tone tinged with disappointment. He crouched down beside Kili, his oversized-head-helmet hovering uncomfortably close to her face as he kept his hand on her shoulder, keeping her from springing up and running. She wished he would just go away and leave her to mourn in peace. "So, what are you doing here, then?"

"I came to… to save the Jedi," Kili sputtered helplessly and stupidly. She clung to the hilt like it was a treasured toy she would have carried everywhere, had she been just a few years younger.

The clone trooper let out a small chuckle. "It's a little late for that." He looked over his shoulder for a moment, and then back to the girl. "Let's get you out of here," he said, trying to help Kili to her feet.

When she refused to budge, he wrapped his arms around her torso and lifted her up. Instinctively, she curled her spine inward and brought up her knees, looking like some sort of scolded animal. The trooper's bracers were hard against her ribs as she clutched the lightsaber hilt in her clammy hands.

"They were my friends," she protested as she was set down in a darkened hallway. Tattered banners wafted in the charred breeze that blew through the empty halls where Jedi had once walked. The chilling wind reeked of death and Kili shuddered, drawing herself tighter into a ball. She wondered if the ghosts of her friends were wandering around, demanding justice.

"They were mine, too," the clone trooper replied quietly, his voice heavy with regret. He sat down next to her, his back against the stone wall, looking out at nothing in particular, or perhaps, particularly, nothing.

Kili looked sidewise at him, curious. How could he possibly call them his friends?

"I fought with them from planet to planet." He gesturing with the air of a storyteller. "Together, we saw worlds I never would have thought existed, we helped those in need, we fought for the noble cause of the Republic. And then…" His fists clenched, his head slung low. "I slaughtered them."

"… Why did you do it?" Kili asked, feeling strangely detached from hatred. Perhaps this was how Jedi thought, she mused. The painful core of anger in her was gone and she felt lighter inside.

The trooper shook his head slowly. "I don't know. But I don't think it was right." He took a breath and sat up a little straighter. "No, I don't think that at all."

"Did Palpatine tell you to do it?"

"Yes."

Kili frowned. "I don't trust him." She'd been ambivalent in her opinions of the Chancellor, being uninterested in politics at such a young and carefree age, but now she absolutely knew the Emperor was rotten.

"I don't quite trust him, either," the trooper replied in a low voice. "I haven't, not since I was young. But I trusted the Jedi, so there was no conflict so long as I was ordered to work alongside them." He sighed.

The Bothan child watched him. "What are you going to do now?"

"I don't know that, either. I… I can't keep doing this. It was so different in the Clone Wars, you know? I was destroying droids. Droids that didn't feel, didn't think… didn't bleed. I don't think I'm made out to be a killer…" He slumped against the wall, resting his arms on his knees.

Kili tilted her head at him for a moment, and then let go of the lightsaber hilt with one hand and reached out to him, tentatively resting her fingers on his pauldron. "You can come live with my mom and me." Something about him made her want to give him the chance to make restitution—perhaps because he seemed so sincerely sorry about what he had done. "We won't tell anyone about you."

"Really?" His white-helmed head turned toward her quickly.

She nodded. "Mom's out finding a new job right now, so she'll be able to take care of both of us."

He chuckled. "Oh, I wouldn't ask your mother to try to provide for me as well. Still… I guess you're right, it would be best to find somewhere to lie low for a while, until I can be safely forgotten about and I can find a job for myself. Besides, with a mug like mine I doubt I'll be mistaken for a clone trooper in civilian clothing."

He lifted off his helmet and tossed it aside to reveal a clone's face distinguished by several nasty scars and a broken nose. One eye sported a cybernetic eyepatch that glowed with a dim red light. All of this was framed by a curly mop of black hair as he had neglected to crop it closer.

Kili stared at him curiously. To her, it didn't really matter so much what he looked like. She was just relieved to see an organic face beneath that skull-like helmet. It made him seem more like an ordinary person instead of a killing machine. "What's your name?"

"My official designation is CC-8734. A lot of the other _vode _gave themselves nicknames, but I… guess I never got around to it."

"I'm Kili Ka'ahrey." The Bothan held her hand out for him to shake, which he did, returning her smile. "So I guess we're friends now. I'll have to come up with a good name for you."

"I'd like that," CC-8734 said as he helped the girl to her feet and began to lead her down the hallway.

The way he was taking her led to a side door out into the main streets. The emptiness in her heart was replaced with a warm, swelling feeling. She had made things right, in her own way. Sanja would be proud of her.

"For a last name, how about something like… Antilles?" she asked the clone trooper with an amused expression on her snout.

The man rolled his eyes. "That's a bit overused, isn't it?"


End file.
